Better go out and buy a gas fireplace and stove soon before federal regulations make them more expensive. Federal officials are looking to regulate the energy usage of fake fireplaces as part of the Obama administration’s effort to fight global warming.

I think they missed an opportunity there. The headline should have read “Feds To Regulate Fake Fireplaces To Pretend to Stop Fake Global Warming.”

A couple of weeks ago, President Obama proposed to make community college “free” for everyone. Of course, just like lunch, there is no free community college. The cost, which the administration says will be $60 billion over 10 years (but will probably be several times that), must be borne by someone. His plan to pay for it (leaked in advance of the state of the union address) reveals how thoroughly Marxist Obama is in his core beliefs.

For years, parents (and grandparents) have been urged to save for their kids’ college educations by regularly contributing to a 529 college savings plan. You’ve probably seen the public service announcements countless times on TV. Like a 401k, the contributions grow tax-free in the plan. Like a health savings account, the money isn’t taxed if withdrawn for the intended purpose, in this case college expenses. This is what people have been promised for the past 15 years in order to encourage them to be thrifty and plan for their children’s future.

Obama wants to break that promise. He wants to tax the savings of the thrifty and responsible parents and grandparents in order to give a “free” college education to everyone. It illustrates perfectly that the core belief driving him is the Marxist dictum, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his need.”

This is but one of several wealth redistribution schemes being unveiled, supposedly to help “the middle class” at the expense of “the wealthiest.” Like most such schemes, it won’t just take from “the wealthiest” — not that it would be any less evil if it did. My guess is that the typical contributor to a 529 college savings plan is firmly in the middle class, not in the much-maligned 1%.

This contemptible proposal would punish personal responsibility, foresight, and thrift, while rewarding lack of personal responsibility, failure to plan, and dependency. In practical terms, you get less of what you punish and more of what you reward. In moral terms, this is punishing good people precisely for their goodness, and that is vile.

The French Interior Ministry said the rally for unity against terrorism is the largest demonstration in France’s history.

Calling the rally “unprecedented,” the ministry said the demonstrators are so numerous they spread beyond the official march route, making them impossible to count.

French media estimate up to 3.7 million are taking part, more than the numbers who took to Paris streets when the Allies liberated the city from the Nazis in World War II.

More than 40 world leaders joined French President Francois Hollande in the march, including German Chancellor Angela Merkel, British Prime Minister David Cameron, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, and Jordan’s King Abdullah.

So what about President Obama? Meh, too far to travel for something other than a vacation or a round of golf. No Biden either, which is probably just as well; too much risk of embarrassing the US. A prominent member of the cabinet, perhaps? Well, that could easily have happened, but …

U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder is in Paris this week to attend a meeting on fighting terrorism, but did not participate in the march.

Apparently, the only representative of the United States government was Ambassador to France Jane Hartley. She probably didn’t have far to go; the US embassy is near Place de la Concorde, which I’m guessing was on the march route.

Hartley is the perfect person to represent the Obama administration at such an event. Like most of Obama’s ambassadorial appointments, she has zero foreign policy experience, but was a major “bundler” of campaign contributions in both 2008 and 2012. Besides, having a higher-ranking administration official represent the US might give people the mistaken impression that this administration considers opposition to terrorism important. Or, Allah forbid, that it sees jihad as a threat.

Judging from yesterday’s press conference, it’s pretty clear what President Obama, our delusional narcissist-in-chief, believes caused the Democrats’ cataclysmic collapse on Tuesday: tens of millions of Americans are dispirited, disheartened, and disillusioned because he hasn’t been able to fundamentally transform America faster, so they stayed home.

By now, you may have heard about the email that’s been labeled a “smoking gun” regarding the administration’s Benghazi coverup. It’s one of 41 documents finally obtained by Judicial Watch as the result of an FOIA lawsuit filed last summer. The email in question, written by Ben Rhodes on 9/14/12, sets out the talking points for Ambassador Susan Rice to use in her multiple Sunday news show appearances two days later. Rhodes’ title is “Assistant to the President and Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications and Speechwriting.”

Is this email a smoking gun? If you rely on the Associated Press story (as it appears in the Denver Post), you have no way of knowing. AP simply presents it as “Carney said, Graham said” — as if there’s no definitive way of determining the truth. But there is.

ABC’s Jonathan Karl tweeted a picture of the relevant section of the email, which Carney insisted was not about Benghazi. It contains the heading “Benghazi.” The first talking point under that heading tells Rice to say “the demonstrations in Benghazi were spontaneously inspired by protests at the US Embassy in Cairo” (see below). We know from other information (including earlier messages in the same email thread) that everyone involved at the White House was already aware that this was a planned terrorist attack and that there was no preceding “demonstration.”

The Obama administration has ignored laws, unilaterally changed laws, and administratively enacted laws, demonstrating complete indifference to the separation of powers and contempt for the legislative branch. Now it seems poised to also demonstrate its contempt for the judicial branch. Michael Cannon at Forbes (bold emphasis added):

As readers of this blog know, the plaintiffs in Halbigv. Sebelius and three similar cases are challenging the IRS’s attempt to issue certain subsidies and impose certain taxes where it has no authority to do so: in the 34 states that have chosen not to establish a health insurance “exchange” under the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. Oral arguments in Halbig are scheduled for March 25 before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

On Wednesday, March 12, government lawyers filed with the court a brief but strange “notice of supplemental authority” that seems to suggest the IRS will keep issuing those subsidies and imposing those taxes even if the court declares the agency has no authority to do so.

On Tuesday, President Obama unveiled his Fiscal Year 2015 budget proposal, for what it’s worth (not much, according to the National Taxpayers Union Foundation, which describes it as “[i]ncomplete, inconclusive, and indecipherable”). He proposes to spend $3.901 trillion (that’s $3,901,000,000,000), almost $1 trillion (33%) more than in 2008. The Obama administration describes this budget as ending the “era of austerity.” The “era of austerity” is apparently FY2012 and FY2013, when actual outlays declined by a whopping 4% from the stimulus-swollen FY2011 level.

Me, I’d rather look back at a different “era.” Remember Bill “the era of big government is over” Clinton? He’s revered by the Socialist Democrats, and his eight years in office are viewed as some kind of golden age. Let’s set the Wayback Machine to FY1999, the last full fiscal year of the Clinton presidency.

Actual FY1999 outlays were $1.702 trillion. According to this price deflator calculator, that’s $2.266 trillion in 2013 dollars. About 42% lower than Obama’s proposed FY2015 budget. Now that’s what I call austerity — or at least a good start.

My memory isn’t what it used to be, but I don’t recall children starving, bridges collapsing, and old people dying in the streets during the Clinton years.

If we had a decent opposition party in this country, it would demand a return to Clinton-era spending levels, adjusted for inflation. Heck, I wouldn’t even mind too much if they threw in an adjustment for the 14% population growth since 1999 (even though there’s no logical reason why all federal spending should rise with population). That would still leave the budget 28% lower than Obama’s proposal.

Actually, it’s pointless spending a lot of time on the Obama budget proposal since it’s going nowhere. The Senate’s Socialist Democrats have already made it clear that they won’t be considering a budget resolution this year. Doing so would force all those vulnerable senators up for reelection to choose between rebuffing their president or going on record supporting higher taxes, more spending, and an ever-growing debt burden. This budget proposal is purely PR and talking points.

How blatant is this latest unilateral change from the Obama administration on the law they claim is working well? The Hill can’t avoid connecting the dots in its lead sentence:

The Obama administration is set to announce another major delay in implementing the Affordable Care Act, easing election pressure on Democrats.

As early as this week, according to two sources, the White House will announce a new directive allowing insurers to continue offering health plans that do not meet ObamaCare’s minimum coverage requirements.

The cancellations would have created a firestorm for Democratic candidates in the last, crucial weeks before Election Day.

Actually, HHS thought they had already avoided that outcome with its previous extension. That pushed off the deadline for plans to meet the requirements of ObamaCare until January 1, 2015, which is after the midterms. However, none of the geniuses at HHS seemed to know that insurers have to send out cancellation notices 90 days in advance, which would mean that letters would go out no later than October 1 … five weeks or so before the vote.

D’oh!

There seems to be wide agreement among legal scholars — even staunch liberals such as Jonathan Turley — that the President’s executive decrees are unconstitutional and undermine the separation of powers. Yet everyone seems to agree that nothing can be done about it because no one has “legal standing” to challenge these edicts — they don’t “create a sufficiently concrete injury for standing.”

Personally, I think that destroying my right to live under a government of laws, not of men, and to have those laws made by my elected representatives as mandated by the Constitution is a pretty significant injury. But I’m not a legal expert with an Ivy League degree.

Dr. Larry Kawa is arguing, with the help of Judicial Watch, that he does have standing, having spent significant time and money to ensure that his orthodontics practice is in compliance with the law as written. He has appealed the district court’s dismissal of his lawsuit to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals. More power to him.

WASHINGTON — President Obama had no public events on his schedule today, yet skipped a meeting of his national security team at the White House today as they huddled over the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Seen leaving the meeting at the White House were Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Martin Dempsey, and CIA Director John Brennan.

Vice President Joe Biden reportedly joined the meeting via videoconference, while Obama was briefed later by National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

No biggie. Susan Rice and Valerie Jarrett will tell him what to do and say. As usual.

After the Russian Army invaded the nation of Georgia, Senator Obama’s reaction was one of indecision and moral equivalence, the kind of response that would only encourage Russia’s Putin to invade Ukraine next.

For those comments, she was mocked by the high-brow Foreign Policy magazine and its editor Blake Hounshell, who now is one of the editors of Politico magazine.

…

Hounshell wrote then that Palin’s comments were “strange” and “this is an extremely far-fetched scenario.”

“And given how Russia has been able to unsettle Ukraine’s pro-Western government without firing a shot, I don’t see why violence would be necessary to bring Kiev to heel,” Hounshell dismissively wrote.

I’m reminded of how the left mocked Palin for telling Tea Party groups to “party like it’s 1773″ — blissfully unaware that that was the year of the Boston Tea Party. When you repeatedly make fun of someone for being a stupid yahoo, and they’re repeatedly proven wiser and more knowledgeable than you, shouldn’t you feel some embarrassment and shame?